WiMAX, which stands for the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a standards-based broadband wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. There are two main applications of WiMAX today: fixed WiMAX and mobile WiMAX. Fixed WiMAX applications are point-to-multipoint, enabling broadband access to homes and businesses, for example. Mobile WiMAX is based on OFDM and OFDMA and offers the full mobility of cellular networks at broadband speeds.
Hybrid Automatic Repeat-Request (HARQ) techniques allow for reliable data transmissions, requiring data bursts to be acknowledged by a receiver or they will be retransmitted. Unfortunately, if a data burst includes protocol data units (PDUs) that have not been successfully decoded, the receiver may continue to wait for the PDUs even if the data burst containing them has been retransmitted a maximum allowable number of times.